“Fantastic summit” effectively turns Mercosur into a customs union
Mercosur concluded Tuesday in Argentina one of its most successful summits after having reached agreements on issues that consolidate integration and at the same avoiding being drawn into a frustrating debate on a renewed chapter of the ongoing Venezuela/Colombia conflict.
Following six years of negotiations Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, Mercosur full members reached an agreement on crucial points of the Common Customs Code, besides signing a trade agreement with Egypt.
The distribution of customs revenue as well as the double charge of the common external tariff, AEC, was finally agreed helping to further integrate the block and facilitating negotiations with third parties.
The Mercosur summit also decided on commercial benefits for quake ravaged Haiti and agreed on the fundamentals for the protection of the Guaraní aquifer, considered one of the world’s largest drinking water reservoirs and which extends under the four countries of the group.
“It was an extraordinary, fantastic result that has left us all most satisfied”, said Argentine president and host of the summit Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her successor in the Mercosur pro tempore chair Brazil’s Lula da Silva
The Brazilian leader who underlined he’s the most “senior” member of these summits insisted that the San Juan summit was the “most important” since December 1994, when the meeting at Ouro Preto, Brazil set the foundations for the customs union.
Discussions a the San Juan summit, which also involved Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Chile’s Sebastian Piñera have been “the most easy going and cool”, said Lula da Silva recalling all types of disputes in previous meetings.
Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo was the only president who mentioned the Colombia-Venezuela conflict saying that a solution was “only a matter of time”.
The absence of President Chavez helped to avoid references and debates on the issue.
Nevertheless Mercosur full and associate members approved a statement calling on Unasur (Union of South American Nations) to convene in the near future an extraordinary meeting of presidents to address the situation.
Unasur secretary general Nestor Kirchner, also present at the summit, avoided comments on the conflict but anticipated that things would begin to improve once president-elect Juan Manuel Santos takes office next August 7.
The former Argentine president is scheduled to meet with Santos in Bogotá and Chavez in Caracas.
It was evident that Mercosur members wanted at all cost to prevent the Colombian-Venezuela conflict from spoiling what worked out as one of the most effective summits in years, following the agreement on the Customs Code and the common external tariff.
Landlocked Paraguay was reluctant in trusting that the Customs offices of its associate Mercosur members would effectively mail the cheque of its share of levies.
But agreeing on the issue opened the way for ending the double or triple charge of the external tariff for any goods entering Mercosur, before it reaches the final recipient country.
The advance on these issues effectively makes Mercosur a customs union facilitating negotiations with third parties.
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President Jose Mujica surrendered our sovereignty w/out contest. Argentina is posting their flag and replacing the Uruguayan. Finally we’re part of the Cabildo of Buenos Aires, like in the old days of the colonies. The Frente Amplio and his tupamaro president decided that negotiations are easier that way…why bother?
04/08/10 for the first time were talked of sovereignty about the continental platform.
PorEleonora Gosman Special Sent San Juan
Several reasons explain the satisfaction that you/they evidenced yesterday presidents Cristina Kirchner and Lula he/she gives Silva. Perhaps the most important, for their impact in the protection of the tempting own natural resources, was the new declaration Malvinas it has more than enough.
“It is not a more ones” the President underlined what supposed to take a short cut I/you/he/she could be the thought of the journalists, accustomed to the eternal reissue of this pronouncement. Yesterday there was in fact something very different: for the first time Brazil subscribed an official statement that he/she not only mentions to the Malvinas. It includes inside the sovereignty the Islas Georgias and Sandwich of the South as well as the continental platform of Argentina.
Certainly, for CK it was a new diplomatic victory.
And he/she has their base in the economic importance that he/she acquired the national recovery on the archipelagos of the South Atlantic after the Britons began to extract raw of the surrounding area. What was an access door to the Antártida became of good to first an invaluable source of petroleum. The existence of a foreign power that exploits the resources off shore in the containing today's more southern area enervates to the countries of the coast oceanic owners of enormous quantities of fuel inside the marine territory that belongs them, like it is the case of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
Brazil possesses in its Atlantic coast the biggest reservations of raw of the country, a discovery that of not more than five year, and at some time you ended up showing off that those wealth are prolonged for the Uruguayan coast and possibly the Argentinean (something that is not proven). For that reason, to include the Georgia and Sandwich contains, o
Sorry, your post is too long and full of pro Latinamerica populist propaganda. You’re to me a foreign power. The Falkland Islands are home to the islanders and they have the right to do with their land as they please. Your populist charade of calling them English colony doesn’t stick w/me.
The argument of who has the rights to the Falklands it’s not going to stop the islanders from allowing, like you call it a “foreign power, England”, to drill for oil or else. Argentina and its allies can keep whining at the OAS and the UN the old claim that started circa 1833. Continuous pursuit of the Falklands by peaceful means will last eternally. Only military force will decide the outcome. Do you think that Argentina and its allies are ready for another round against the British?
Thank you
Well, if “developing Southamerican nations” have the will to start a 3er WW it will happen. Observing at the populist leaders of South America it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Thus, makes influence over uruguayan commerce of the same products in argentinas market, because internal prices uruguayan goods achieve in argentina are more expensive that national ones...
that's the reason to get angry Diario El Pais (in the oposition on Mujica's government)
I’m a male 61 years old, Uruguayan born but lived my life since 19 in a great country, USA. Now I live in Salto, Uruguay since 2004. I fought in Nam against the “gooks” because it was my duty and my contract with the US, then it was a draft for all legal aliens. Peace is the best but not always, I’m a peace loving person but for sure I’m not a pacifist, like Neville Chamberlain, I admire FDR and Sir W. Churchill. I’m totally against of this charade, joke, whatever of “Malvinas Argentinas”. The Falklands are for the islanders which they don’t want to be argentinians but they want to be English.
El Pais is a newspaper that sells news to whom pays best…do you get the point?.. For the last 5 years the Frente Amplio, a populist leftish government is ruling this poor, ignorant country. Jose Mujica is a senile 75 years old “clown” that has no clue of what he’s doing, he is 2 steps away form taking a s****anyway. He just surrendered the ultimate: URUGUAYAN SOVEREIGNTY to a foreign country,Argentina, it doesn’t matter if they speak Spanish or English, to me he’s a TRAITOR !!
Tank you.
You are a pensioned American Citizen (not Uruguayan at all. You don’t speak Spanish and NO person in this world forgets his mother tongue if he had lived, as you declare, the first 19 years of his life in that country)
You are another one of those 85% pensioned American Ex-Pats that “Think” they can live like Kings in South America from their Yank pensions and end hating us when they can’t.
You are desperate and angry because the value of the dollar has gone down nearly 40% during the last months, making your Yank pension even smaller.
You are so un-adapted and brain-dead that at an age of only 61, you could not dream to go out and take a proper job.
You are another one of those Yanks in Lat-Am that love to tell lies about your past when as a matter of fact you never left your Kansas farm.
That’s what I “Think” you are..... or at least, that is what you have showed us to be.......
Yankie go Home
So much twisted, venomous intolerance in such a small space!
C'mon .......... I do not Believe that the CIA are infiltrating everywhere............
I Know it.........:-)
As for Liberty.... I Think he could be defined as a “Delusional Free-Lance Wannabe”.......
And we all know how much attention to pay to such loons, don't we?
Twinky and his populist buddies are part of the false Latin heritage. South America will never come out of the 'caves' till the Aliens work in their genes. We’ll never get along. Look at Argentina suing Uruguay over a paper mill, blockading international bridges. They’ve the nerve to call us “brothers” while they stabbed us in the back. They get together at these Mercosur & Unasur meetings to squabble and gossip. They’ve been doing that since the time of the colonies.
Excuse me???
Did he write: “Till the Aliens work in their genes”
This guy is getting more and more wacko!!!
Based on “aver FULL OF GAS”, “gorge”, “Billy I'M IN A HAZE”, “axel FOLLOWED BY THE NOISE MADE WHEN VOMITING” and “Twinky” the IMMIGRANT and similar, it is impossible not to accept his judgement.
The Brazilian leader who underlined he’s the most “senior” member of these summits [this really says it all] [and who is the BOSS]
it looks like you south Americans could be heading towards a common market, or European union, perhaps brazil wants a united states of south America, with brazil at its head, a powerful block indeed ,
but where does that leave Argentina, just a pawn in someone else’s game perhaps ??
ó porque dije alguna realidad que molestó? Sería bueno que repartieras tu justicia por igual.
Latinoamérica está más unida que nunca, en Argentina ni en ningún otro país de la región estamos interesados en tolerar las constantes calumnias de los piratas invasores, ni agresiones a nuestra cultura.
Así que mejor vayan aprendiendo español, porque no queremos colonias europeas en nuestro territorio.
Saludos.
ect ect sorry argentino or should i say brazilioargentino
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